One of the designers who made it happen

Mine was an A+ experience. This designer was prompt, responsive, creative. Everything went easily, seamlessly and I am so pleased with our new logo.

- mkoster

How SBC LLC started their logo design journey

Company name

Somerset Brewing Company

Overview

Somerset Brewing Co. is a new craft brewery in central New Jersey and prides itself on producing high quality, uniquely flavored ales and lagers, while employing traditional methods and ingredients.

- Our company is founded on the belief that bigger is not necessarily better and the value we bring to the people and communities we serve is much greater than the financial profits we make. Basically, it’s always about the people

- We wish to project the image of who we are; strong, authentic, old world brewers of fine beers with our hearts set on making a positive and significant difference in the lives of the people we serve and do business with; Good beer, good citizens

- While developing and growing a business that is profitable financially, it is more important that we are viewed as authentic. Every owner and employee of our company must personally commit themselves to demonstrating our core values:

-- being more than just another brewery to our resellers and distributors
-- providing much more than just another beer to drink for our customers
-- always being ready to go “above and beyond” for the communities we serve

We strongly believe in these things and want our logo to act as the basis of the bond between our company and our suppliers, distributors, and our customers.

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

Our target audience includes all of the beer lovers in our area of the country (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware) who are part of the on-going (and relatively new) craft beer phenomenon where people who are tired of drinking the watered down, ultra-lite, fairly tasteless mass produced beers and are turning to locally produced, fresh Ales and Lagers which have stronger and more diverse flavors, colors, and aromas. Good examples of craft brewers that we love and respect are Yards, Brooklyn, Sierra Nevada, Stone, Magic Hat, Dogfish Head, Long Trail, and Flying Fish.

While the craft beer revolution is not necessarily stealing market from wine makers, craft beers are now becoming so complex and of such high quality that they are being paired by experts with foods just as wine is. We expect to attract some cross-overs, as well as those who simply love both wine and beer, as the demographics for age, income, and education would be very similar in most cases. In general, we expect to attract younger consumers (age 21 - 40) with some disposable income as craft beer prices tend to be a bit higher than the mass produced beers. We would also expect our typical consumer to have more education, but this is not assumed and we expect to educate our consumers on the reasons why locally brewed craft beers are superior to their mass produced and imported counterparts.

Requirements

- need a logo to represent our beer brewing company - we hesitate to give too many design directions because we welcome creativity and want to see some different designs - but we know we have to give you something!
- desire a more traditional feel, no cartoons or whimsical concepts
- incorporate beer concepts where appropriate; perhaps images of hops or barley, but this should not be central and should be more like window dressing
- we like the thought of an oval or a circle design that would act as the frame for logo concepts on the inside. This design would be something that we could make larger to be used on our labels where we would remove what is in the middle/framed area and replace with artwork/branding for the individual beers. (We would hope to find a logo designer that we can use to work the labeling too!) A good example of this concept is the logo for Brooklyn Brewery... not too complex and easy to manipulate colors for different beers. The logo design is incorporated into the beer labels.